Page 38 of Taken to Kor
Tevbarannos removes his dagger from his belt and chucks it at me. The blunt side clunks off of my pectoral and I watch him snarl around the room, clumsily engaging Herannathon in a mock battle. They wrestle on the floor whileQuintenanrretcontinues to stodgily argue the merits of having tentacles and Erobu removes himself slightly from the fray and begins speaking to someone on the other side of the token in his ear. I try to pay attention, but I’m distracted by Gerannu, looking at me.
He’s frowning.
“What?”
“Her leg,” he starts, rubbing his jaw. He stretches out his own right leg and massages his thigh just above the knee. I wonder if he’s aware of the action. “Is it her warrior’s mark?” He asks me.
I shake my head before truly considering the possibility. Then I stop and my smile falls to form a frown even more severe than his. Deena does have a warrior’s brand on her left leg. It begins just above her knee, streaks down over her leg, before wrapping around her calf and finishing somewhere near her ankle.
“I don’t understand.” I shake my head. “What would her warrior’s mark have to do with her concern for being taken as a mate? If anything, it would only increase her desirability.”
“Maybe…” I can see the wheels of his mind turning. He is old enough to be my sire and I have always counted on his wisdom and capacity to reason. And then it seems to hit him. He sits up straighter and his skein flutters and he blinks at me, silver eyes bright. “Maybe humans view scars like the princes and princesses of Quadrant One.”
I lean back, aghast and horrified. “You can’t mean…”
“I mean to consider the idea that humans are like the Quadrant One elite. Perhaps, they view scars asdeformities.”
The word that comes through is an ancient one.Deformity.Chroggh.It’s so old it’s still pronounced in old Meero and comes across as little more than a grunt. I can’t even remember the last time I said the word out loud.
“But her leg is not deformed,” I counter. “It is still a leg.” And even if there were no leg, it would not be a deformity. It would be a part of her, just as beautiful as all the rest. A sign that she survived a great ordeal and lived to sing the tales. And knowing her, she would sing them, badly and off key and every unique note would make my heart clench.
Gerannu nods again, shoulders slumping as I poke an easy hole in his initial assessment. It’s Tevbarannos who speaks and it takes me until then to realize that he and Herannathon have stopped fighting. “What if she doesn’t view it as acherr…chare…” He shakes his head, cursing as he fails to pronounce it. “What if she views it as a khrui would? When a member of the pack loses a limb, the rest of the pack eats them?”
“We’re not going to eat her,” Herannathon says, frowning.
“Ontte,” Gerannu says, shooting up onto his feet. “What if the humans view warrior’s marks as weaknesses? Surely, if they live on a hostile planet, then the absence of one of their limbs would make them more vulnerable to attack.”
“Have youseenthat female with a blaster?” Herannathon uncrosses his arms and steps away from the wall. He takes the seat that Erobu vacated. “She fears nothing.”
Pride. I haven’t felt it like this before. It swirls in a thick, viscous liquid just beneath all of my plates, causing them to lift just a little. And it isn’t that I haven’t been proud before, it’s that I feelherpride as if it is my own. I’ve never felt someone else’s pride before. Huh. Funny. Charming.
The males around me all chuckle. At least, until Gerannu says, “But what if, on their planet, they have no blasters? If they are truly like the khrui then they’d have to fight with their hands.” Gerannu cringes. “Could you imagine a female, even one as ferocious as Deena, against a khrui with no weapon?”
I black out for a moment. My heart stops. My entire body freezes. I fall out of my seat as if pushed. I’m on my feet, hands clutching the ridges on top of my head like my brain is attempting to flee through them. “Shrov!” If Deena fought a khrui with her bare hands, it would kill her.
Shrov, ifIfought a khrui with my bare hands, it would be a fearsome battle, one I would not leave unscathed. There is a chance I would not survive such an encounter. But we have technology. All modern species have technology. But what if she isn’t modern? From the little information there is on humans floating around the known Quadrants — most that I’ve gained from the lying wretch, Mathilda — humans were stuck on their satellites for hundreds of rotations and, before that, they had no access to interplanetary travel. I mean, if they had, wouldn’t there be more of them?
Centare, no interplanetary travel short of the satellites and we’ve seen how well those went. The first crash landed on that Drakesh moon, leaving the humans to fend for themselves. The Balesilha satellite was occupied by humans who evolved cannibalistic tendencies, their technology too ancient and miserable to sustain them. Stilllaying linesto transfer power from one region of a single satellite to another. They didn’t even have lights, for shrov’s sake! Or they did, but their lights only functioned when not covered by the gunk growing on them. What even was that gunk? Why did their yeeyar not eat it up? Yeeyar thrives on microbial and bacteria such as that.
They have no yeeyar.
They have no blasters.
Deena has been living like an animal.
Deena thinks herself an animal.
Deena thinks her warrior’s mark is a curse and not a sign of how capable she is of defeating any enemy.
I frown so hard my face aches. My whole body aches. I glance back to the door, determined to go to her and get answers about this possibility immediately, but only to disprove them. I don’t want to hear her speak if she thinks any single one of these theories is true. Because she is a female who battles cannibals. She is a female who spent her whole life battling evil incarnate. She is a female who would make a worthy captain to any pirate ship. And she is still here. With me.
Mine.
The pride and love in my chest that I hold for her aches. I take a jerky step towards the yeeyar entrance to the command deck, when Gerannu’s voice pulls me back. “Rhorkanterannu, where are you going?”
“To Deena,” I mumble.
“What do you want us to do with the humans?”
